


Dem Reloads the World

by The_Exile



Category: Breath of Death VII, Cthulhu Saves the World
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: smallfandombang, F/M, Harm to books, Madness, Other, Saving, Spoilers, blatant inspiration from other games, fourth wall shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: "Rise from your grave, legendary hero! 'Tis not yet your time! Okay, so technically it is your time. I may be cheating a little."Skeletal warrior Dem's noble sacrifice allowed another species to live that he'd never even encountered. He never expected to wake from his final resting place. But now he's been summoned to another world to find out that his quest was a set-up, his sacrifice not his own choice. He is asked by a mysterious voice to aid Great Cthulhu, of all unlikely heroes, to enact their revenge and end the tyranny of the Narrator.Art by Candygramme - http://candygramme.dreamwidth.org/456419.html





	1. The Legendary Hero Dem Awakens Once More

"Rise from your grave once more, legendary hero! 'Tis not yet your time! Well, okay, so technically it is your time," the booming voice that resonated all around him in the complete darkness sounded a little less dramatic and more hesitant, "I may be cheating a little but it's not like he's never done anything wrong in his life either. In any case, he's not here and I am, so nobody can stop me."

"Um..." began Dem. The skeleton was surprised to hear his own voice, low-pitched, a little hollow and dull from rattling around in an empty skull. He jumped at the sound, suddenly afraid that he was being far too loud, as if he had accidentally sneezed in a library.

"Oh, I do apologise, this must all be rather confusing and maybe a little distressing for you. Do take a moment to get used to being alive again. If you can try and remember something, it'd be terribly useful, but don't push yourself if it's traumatic," said the voice, "We aren't in a hurry. I mean, the world might end soon, but it never pays to go charging in unprepared to save it and getting yourself killed again..."

"I was dead," muttered Dem, trying to look down at his bleached bone hands. As his eyes adjusted, he realised that there wasn't literally no light at all, maybe a few strange dancing motes of flame here and there, and he could just about see the moving outline of his own body. Of his conversation partner, there was no sign.

"Indeed you were. Anything else?"

"I sacrificed myself. To save everyone," the skeleton groaned and cradled his head as he tried to collect the scattered fragments of hazy memories that floated around his mind like the flames.

"Ah, I see he's still in your head, trying to warp the world to his way of thinking. No, Dem, I'm afraid I'm going to have to correct you there," the speaker replied, "You sacrificed yourself and your entire race to save a much larger race that you had no reason to care about and who won't even know you were there. Which would have been terribly noble and heroic of you all, except that you weren't given a choice in the matter."

"Oh yes, that's right..." pain shot through Dem's consciousness, a red-hot blade of light, enough to knock him backwards. He slammed into a jagged stone cave wall. Something dripped down his neck, "The voice asked me whether I really wanted to do it, but... I couldn't say 'no'. I can't remember why, it was just..."

"Impossible," said the voice, "As if the option simply wasn't there. The word 'no' had been taken away."

"How do you know about this?" the skeleton demanded, standing up and drawing his sword. He vaguely remembered being buried with it, and his battle reflexes were good enough that he picked it up without thinking, wielded it with perfect precision even in the darkness.

"It doesn't matter who I am or where I get my information from. I'm the one giving you the second chance. Or, more correctly, giving the true flow of destiny a second chance after a certain other person messed it up with his stupid sentiment," snapped the voice, "When you step out of this cave, you'll find yourself in an unfamiliar world, so you need to be prepared. I've transported you back in time, you see, a long time before any of this ever happened. You can't directly undo what was done to you, I'm afraid - he will still be there and it will only happen again - so I've brought you back to a point where something can actually be done about it. You see, at the current date and time, our Narrator friend - he calls himself the Narrator, by the way - has just made a very dangerous enemy, someone who might actually be powerful enough to track him down and take him out."

"I can defeat the man who did this to me?" repeated Dem.

"He is going to meet a very horrifying fate indeed," said the voice, "For he has angered Great Cthulhu."

"Wait, THE Cthulhu? The Elder God? He exists?"

"He is here right now on this planet, in person," said the voice, "He was awakened early from his sleep, his natural cycle interrupted in a way that drained his powers, but he has now recovered almost to his former glory."

"My enemy is stupid enough to wake up an Elder God early?" 

"The awakening itself was not his doing, but he interfered in the end results, attempting to force Great Cthulhu into acting against his own wishes, trapping him on the planet to do the Narrator's own dirty work rather than watching him return to his previous business."

"To be fair on him, Cthulhu's business can't have been good for anyone else."

"But it was destined," snapped the voice, "And the Narrator's obsession with saving humans at all costs, no matter what the damage to the space-time continuum and the repercussions all over the Universe, is starting to annoy everyone. Humans are not that important or even numerous on a cosmic scale."

"Would Cthulhu really see me as an ally and not food?"

"Currently, he still relies a lot on faithful, strong companions. It is partly a result of what was done to him by the Narrator. And you are as strong as any of his other companions," explained the voice, "He will arrive soon and want to explore the cave out of curiosity. Usually there is a more traditional hero sleeping here, who would wake up and challenge Cthulhu to prove his worth. It took me a lot of time and effort to swap you around. It will be hard to resist the urge to simply play this role in his stead, but it's important that you speak to him honestly and persuade him to work together with you to defeat the Narrator. Your strength and his cosmic awareness should be enough between you to both locate his realm and defeat him. Now, go! My time here is growing short... I leave the rest to you…"

The mysterious voice became fainter as though it was receding into the distance, then Dem heard footsteps and saw the bobbing orange glow of torch lights. Sword still in hand, he stood confidently in the centre of the room, leaning back on his gravestone, and waited for the adventurers to step inside.

* * *

As the footsteps grew louder, bestial roars and eerie wailing broke the silence, followed by the sound of enormous claws clattering against steel weapons. One of the adventurers bellowed a battle cry in a language that was so far beyond Dem's comprehension that his mind reeled from trying to parse the alien sounds. Their voice came out a gurgle, as though their vocal chord structure wasn't quite humanoid, something that was probably necessary to pronounce any syllables of that language. Someone else with a higher-pitched voice began chanting the words of an eldritch incantation. As the chant reached a fevered crescendo, Dem heard an ominous rumbling from behind him. He was forced to duck behind the tombstone and cling on for dear life as a tidal wave large enough to touch the ceiling rolled in from nowhere, its frothing waters full of tentacles that writhed and grabbed at anything in their path, their origins unknown in the chaotic blackness under the water. Over the din of the crashing tide, Dem also heard a distinct 'meow', punctuated by the whine of a heavy laser gun, the type that Lita used to wield. The memory was so vivid that he suddenly believed, for a moment, that he was back home, with his own adventuring party, and that they were in some kind of danger that he needed to rush in and assist them with, rather than hiding and gawping like an idiot. As he sprung from behind his grave, sword pointed ahead, he realised his mistake. These weren't his old friends standing before him, slightly soggy and covered in blood and ectoplasm and stubborn tentacles. The first of them to approach him was a larger than average cat with fur that was mostly lime green with Bengal-like black stripes and a white underbelly. The feline immediately strode up to Dem, tail waving in confident curiosity. He regarded the skeletal swordsman with wide, pupil-less black eyes, sniffed the air, then blinked and sneezed.

"Be careful, Paws, I think that's the guardian of this cave!" called the blue-haired girl who reminded Dem of Sara. As far as he could work out, she was the powerful magician who had conjured the tidal wave. He could tell by the fact that she was the one who minded all the tentacles the least, even though the green-skinned swordsman seemed to have a face that was mostly made out of tentacles. Dem guessed that the fighter was supposed to be Cthulhu, although he seemed more humanoid and less insanity-inducing in appearance. He must still be low on power, surmised the skeleton, unless the legends of him are overblown.

"It's okay, meow," replied Paws the cat. His voice came out rather robotic-sounding, like the machine Lita had once invented to translate her speech into another language, until she had dismantled it in frustration after realising that everyone she knew spoke the same language. Dem guessed that it worked along the same principles. Without magic or a machine, how could a cat talk at all? It still didn't explain why Dem still said 'meow'.

"This is the sleeping legendary hero I was talking about, meow," explained Paws, "There appear four heroes in every cycle of destiny: the most important Ultharian in the Universe, their sword-wielding personal servant, a powerful magician and a newly awakened sleeping hero of legend. It's the same every time. Although there was the one time that the magician and the sleeping hero were the same thing and it got complicated..."

"But that's an Ultharian legend, and this skeleton doesn't look all too friendly," said the woman, "He's grinning like a madman and his eyes are all vacant."

"Um, that's what skeletons look like. Are you racist against skeletons or something?" asked Dem, "Maybe you're not the brave adventurers I was told to join after all..."

"See? I told you he was supposed to join us! And now you've offended him. Say you're sorry and you promise to let the cat ride on your shoulders as penance from now on!" demanded Paws.

"You're going to join us, huh? Just like that?" asked the green-skinned, betentacled man, walking forwards to join the cat, "Because there's always been a catch up until now. What is it? You wanna fight us so we can prove our worth? Please tell me you don't want me to perform some more selfless acts of heroism to prove our purity of heart, because this crap is really starting to get on my..."

"Oh no, I wouldn't be ridiculous enough to demand such a pointless waste of resources before the endgame of a major destiny-critical campaign," said Dem.

"What? You know about our quest already? Have you been scrying on us?" asked Cthulhu, "You haven't been peeking on us in the shower, have you?"

Dem shuddered to think what the man whose face looked like that had on under his bright red loincloth, "C... certainly not! The cat is right, I merely..."

"Don't call me a cat!" snapped Paws.

"... I merely share a destiny with you."

"In other words, there's something in it for you as well if I finish my quest," said the swordsman, folding his arms, "What is it? Revenge? Money? Some sort of quest endgame fetish? Ah, why should I care. Loot's communal and for adventuring expenses only, XP is shared, no going off and doing your own thing, any betrayals will result in fates worse than death involving cosmic horrors beyond your feeble mortal comprehension. Any questions?"

"Is it true that you're Cthulhu?"

"Yes, of course I am! What do I look like, a faulty Mindflayer?" Cthulhu shook his head in disgust, jostling his tentacles from side to side, "I thought you said you were up to speed on our quest."

"Only the bare bones," said Dem, before realising what an awful pun he had accidentally made.

"So you're saying that it's in your interest for our quest to go well, but then you claim that you don't know anything about our quest? Which one is it? Or is this some sort of hazy divine prophecy that you can't tell me about or it might affect the outcome of fate? Because I hate those as well," Cthulhu added.

"Well, yes and no," said Dem, "It's going to be difficult to explain. And we might want to find somewhere else to discuss the details. We have rather a powerful mutual enemy, I'm afraid, and he probably knows I'm here by now."


	2. The Legendary Heroes Set Off To Battle Dagon

‘Somewhere else’ turned out to be the nearest tavern. Cthulhu ordered a flagon of ale but it mysteriously turned into orange juice by the time it got to the table. Not that it mattered, as it then turned green and sprouted tentacles as soon as Cthulhu started swearing at it in R’lyehian. The evil tainted drink wasn’t alcoholic but it did cause you to be illuminated by horrifying cosmic knowledge. Unfortunately Dem couldn’t drink because it kept pouring straight out of the gaps in his ribcage. Potions still worked on him because he applied them to his joints as a lubricant. Paws curled up on a cushion next to Cthulhu’s chair, lapping his evil tainted drink from a saucer. Only Ember, who couldn’t fit through the door and had been forbidden from burning a hole in the wall, stayed outside, drinking out of the horse trough. Cthulhu regaled Dem with the story of how the tavern had refused to serve them at all the first time he went in, because he kept driving people insane when he tried to make his order. Now everyone was permanently insane anyway so it didn’t make a difference. As an added bonus, they all now understood R’lyehian, making it easier for Cthulhu to order. In their addled state, none of the staff found it unusual that the party were casually talking about a higher dimension of existence where mysterious beings played with the destinies of clueless mortals.

“So, in a nutshell, your sworn enemy is that weird man who keeps telling me what I’m doing before I decide to do it,” said Cthulhu.

“He’s going to get worse as it goes on,” said Dem, “And, at the last second, when your quest is about to end, he’ll change your most crucial decision and force you to alter destiny in the worst possible way for yourself.”

“Like he did to you?” said Cthulhu, “Well, I’m not some random hero, I’m Cthulhu, and nobody destroys my destiny but me!”

“Prove it, then,” said Dem, “Fight him alongside me. You keep boasting that you understand everything, that you can see into and go anywhere in the Universe, when you’re at full power. I am, just as you say, only an adventurer. All I can do is stab the things we encounter there.”

“His power level is rather extreme for ‘only an adventurer’,” remarked Umi, the sorceress, “And he knows about the same sort of thing you do.”

“So, you’re saying we shouldn’t trust him?” asked Cthulhu.

“I have to be at this power level to fight the Narrator. I really know nothing other than what I just told you. And I was only just told that.”

“And yet you can’t tell us who from,” pointed out Umi.

“He’s not wrong, though,” said Paws. Everyone looked over to the Ultharian.

“What would you know about it?” asked Cthulhu, slightly exasperated, “Who else is suddenly an expert on the mysteries of the Universe?”

“Oh, I… I just meant that I can’t stand people who try to control the fates of others like that. Nobody’s going to mess with me.”

“That’s because you don’t get to make any decisions around here anyway,” said Cthulhu, “I’m main character. Do you understand?”

“I have no desire to usurp the main charactership of another, in an unknown place and time where I still don’t quite understand what’s going on,” said Dem. 

Not that you would even have a right to such a title, he mentally berated himself, not after you have failed your own life’s quest so spectacularly. The skeleton knew that it would not pay to voice his thoughts, however. Cthulhu didn’t seem like a man who would suffer sentimentality or signs of weakness in an ally. Besides, Dem would have a chance to undo everything, to start afresh, once he defeated the man who had ruined his destiny. He would not slay the Narrator, he decided, not unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Far better to find some way to force him to reverse what he had done. If he could. Travel into the past might be possible – he had only a mysterious voice’s word for it, knowing nothing about this place and very little about the period in history that it was supposed to be – but he had no idea if the Narrator was capable of it. That was assuming he was even capable of defeating someone as near-godlike as the Narrator. Umi seemed to be impressed by his power level but Dem did not personally feel very mighty. He mostly felt old, creaky and rusty, as though he had been asleep for too long, and the potions weren’t really helping. Maybe people shouldn’t rise from the grave this often...

“… Were you even listening to my explanation?” demanded Cthulhu. Dem flinched and looked around him. Umi had ordered herself another drink and Paws was fast asleep. The Elder God sighed and folded his arms, “Thought not. No wonder you never know what’s going on!”

 

Cthulhu, Paws and Umi spent the rest of the night explaining to Dem exactly what had happened in their quest so far and what their current goal was. Despite their constantly interrupting and often outright contradicting each other, the skeleton was fairly sure he had the basic idea. The party had been in the middle of clearing out Innsmouth's fish oil refineries of the taint of Dagon's Deep One cults when they had been forced to retreat and resupply. On the way, while flying between Innsmouth and the nearest friendly town on Ember's back, they had spotted the 'Cave of Destiny' that had been Dem's resting place. 

"I hate people trying to muscle in on my territory", chimed in Cthulhu, "It sucks when you work with the sort of people who wouldn't even wait five seconds to steal your job if anything happens to you."

"Well, at least they make sure someone's doing the job," commented Dem, "Wouldn't it be worse to not be able to sleep for fear of the whole thing falling apart around you?"

"That'd be fine if they could actually do their job," grumbled the Elder God, "Anyway, the Universe doesn't even let me have my destined sleep any more."

"You and me both," said Dem.

"Well, at least I'm actually in a position to sort them all out and get back to my own business, now," said Cthulhu, stretching his arms, "After this battle, I'm probably going to have to return to Deep R'lyeh and see what a hash job they've made of running it in my absence."

"I doubt it'll go that easily," said Umi, "Nothing else has so far."

"Well, at least we've cleared most of the place out. It should be a short walk back to Dagon."

After they had finished their drinks, they restocked their supplies and bought Umi a new dress, which she swore had stronger magical enchantments on it and wasn't just an expensive dress she was buying from the party expenses. Cthulhu also bought a new whetstone and oil for their legendary magic sword, claiming that 'he gets cranky when he's not been oiled for a while'. This was the first time Dem had heard of Sharpe, the sentient, self-aware, extremely chatty and somehow ambulatory giant sword. Sharpe wasn't a big fan of the local tavern, where they never stocked his favourite brand of oil on tap and didn't have a weapons rack for him to balance on, so he tended to hang around town with Ember, whose hands were just about large enough to wield him properly and make him feel more like a proper sword. Umi often tried to tease the dragon by hinting that such a relationship might not be considered entirely platonic in enchanted sword society but Ember didn't appear to care. It didn't make the situation look any better when Sharpe insisted on staying with Ember in the stables, claiming that Paws' snoring freaked him out. Dem didn't imagine that a dragon's snoring was any easier on the ears.

After they had rested up in the inn, a process that always seemed to take a shorter time than any of them expected, they set out again on their adventure. Innsmouth wasn't too far away by dragon. Once they entered the refinery, accompanied by the constant misanthropic glares of the locals, it didn't take them long to reach the centre, a large, isolated room at the end of a corridor that absolutely screamed 'evil mastermind's lair'. The party had clearly been training hard and planning a lot more carefully since they were forced out of the demon-infested factory. Dem himself found the monsters rather weak, and once they had actually fought beside each other a few times as a team, he realised that Umi hadn't been exaggerating about how far he had come in terms of raw power in battle. These entities were meant to be the servants of powers that scared the Gods themselves, yet he barely gave them a second glance. Only two things really bothered him about the place: the constant film of green, slimy, rotten fish oil over everything, threatening to gunk up his joints and making him very glad that skeletons had no sense of smell, and also the nagging feeling that something else was watching him, something actually powerful enough to be a threat. He couldn't help but glance over his shoulder every now and then, trying to spot a danger he couldn't quite describe. By the time they reached the end, he knew exactly what it was: the Narrator. His arch-enemy was lurking somewhere, maybe not on this dimension. Try as he might to focus on Cthulhu and Paws' argument that they kept asking him for input into - something about killstealing and what was the correct plural of 'octopus' - he couldn't shake off his growing trepidation at something lying just under the surface, like the very unnatural-looking fish that sometimes jumped out of the filthy water and snapped viciously at them.

Umi used her healing magic to get everyone in good condition for the upcoming battle, then wandered off to do the prayer ritual she always insisted upon before any kind of danger - she called it 'saving', so Dem assumed it had something to do with saving their souls. Then Ember barged the door down and Paws charged inside, yowling and spitting. The others followed closely, Umi already hurling spells.

"How dare you steal my cult!" roared Cthulhu, swinging his sword around in a mighty blow.

"How dare you abandon your loyal followers!" screamed Dagon, snapping at him with sharp piscine teeth.

"I was asleep! You know my schedule! You knew I would be sleeping!" Cthulhu channelled dark energy into his sword and unleashed it with a swipe, hurling shockwaves of black light towards his enemy.

"Well, why are you awake then?" demanded Dagon, lunging forwards and slashing with his claws. He ducked a gout of flame from Ember.

"You tell me! For all I know, you had something to do with it. There I was, nice and cosy, not expecting to wake up for another ten billion years..."

"Will you two concentrate?" complained Dem, before ramming his sword through Dagon's back.

"See what I mean about too much killstealing in this party?" commented Paws. Ember shrugged and set the corpse on fire just to make sure it was really dead.

"All of you, concentrate!" snapped Dem, "That was clearly too easy. Something's about to..."

Then he fell silent. He heard it, seemingly from thin air. A mysterious chime, followed by words in a voice he remembered vividly, that sent chills up his spine:

"Cthulhu gained five hundred hero points!"


	3. The Legendary Heroes Begin Their Assault On The Grand Library

There was a whooshing noise, combined with a single jubilant chime that echoed through the warehouse, as though an angel had just buzzed them and escaped through the ceiling. A golden pillar of light bathed Cthulhu from head to toe. The Elder God rested one foot on a rock while brandishing his sword dramatically to the heavens, giving it a quick twirl and watching the light glint from the blade. 

"Now that Cthulhu was a true hero, his full power was returned to him!" commented the Narrator. At the sound of the voice, Dem looked around to try and locate its source, his grip on his own blade tightening. There was nothing in the room to indicate where the source of the voice might actually be located. His efforts were interrupted by Cthulhu suddenly bursting into a fit of malevolent cackling. He hovered above the ground, red mist pouring from cracks that were forming underneath his feet. The ground continued to shake, knocking over crates that disappeared into the boiling rifts. Cthulhu's eyes were now pure crimson, glowing with pure chaotic power. He seemed to be growing larger, his form more difficult to look at without Dem acquiring a blinding headache despite not having any nerve endings. Umi called out to her companion as she ran towards him, but her pleas for him to stop suddenly broke out into demented cackling, then chanting in R'lyehian, her eyes also glowing red. She turned on Dem and tried to stab him, although it wasn't really working as her trident's prongs kept getting stuck in his ribcage. 

"What's happening?" demanded Dem, shoving the mage out of the way. Her chanting was summoning tentacles from the mist that poured through the cracks in the ground, forcing him to stop every so often to stamp on the ones that tried to wrap around his ankles and pull him in.

"Don't you understand, you fool? This is exactly what I've been fighting for!" Cthulhu's voice boomed out, causing the room to shake even more. Metal girders were falling from the ceiling and one of them almost hit Paws, who yowled and jumped onto Dem's head, "This whole pretence at being a hero... these disgustingly insipid tasks I've been forced to do... you thought it actually meant something? I never once deceived you, you should have all known that I would devour the world once I regained my full power! Don't look so sad, though, I will make you my first disciples and show you the true mysteries of the cosmos!"

"Is this really what's meant to happen?" asked Paws suspiciously.

"It really is. Did you really not understand? I thought I had explained it to you the best I could," said the Narrator.

"Cthulhu... if I may ask... does your evil reign including all human life being destroyed and the dead rising from the grave?" asked Dem.

"Oh, that's only the start of it!" Cthulhu cackled.

"Paws, there's a small chance that this might genuinely be what's destined to happen," said the skeleton. 

"Much as I don’t actually care what happens to a world other than Ulthar, I still don’t trust this Narrator one bit,” said Paws, “We’ve both seen before what he’s capable of.”

“Maybe it was an honest mistake,” Dem shrugged, “Maybe this is his way of making amends.”

“But you were sent back specifically to stop him!”

“For all I know about time travel, I might have already made a difference in some way that changed fate, just by being here,” said Dem, “I don’t want to mess that up. Besides, it doesn’t feel like the right moment. Call it veteran main character’s intuition…”

“Hmph, your instincts suck even worse than a live human. You don’t even have senses,” Paws sniffed, “But it’s not like we can do much with Cthulhu acting like this...”

Umi's screams of rage and defiance split through the air, something different again from the primal insanity of Cthulhu's influence. She thrust her trident up at Cthulhu, "No, this can't be what happened! I refuse to allow it!"

"Hey, why aren't you accepting my gift of insanity? I thought you were my number one cultist!" Cthulhu sulked.

"This is called the power of love, you idiot! It's what gives us faith in the hope that will eventually triumph over all evil. Or haven't YOU even noticed?" she sobbed, "With all your cosmic power, you couldn't even tell that a girl genuinely loved you, and wasn't just one of your cultists? I had hoped that you would learn a few lessons during your time as a hero, that it had at least felt a little good to be doing the right thing for a change, that your friends meant something to you..."

"Hey, I'm not good at all this mortal stuff, okay? I've lived like this for longer than the Universe has existed, how the heck do you expect me to change in... how long has it even been? Two weeks?"

"Hm, you know, this might be a better story than the one we had originally planned out," said the voice. No, Dem realised, a prickling sensation in the back of his neck, there was something different about it, "And it would mean we could write a sequel. I know it's going to go against the grain of everything we've written so far and make us look fools, but you can't argue with this kind of enthusiasm. And if it's what the people really want..."

"Hey, what the heck are you trying to pull?" demanded Cthulhu.

"I knew our love could overcome even the Narrator himself!" squealed Umi.

"It feels the same way," whispered Dem, "I don't know what's different, all of a sudden, but... it's the same as it was on that day, now."

"And the same it was on my home planet," said Paws, his eyes narrowing.

"Why, what happened to your planet?" asked Dem.

Paws hissed, his fur standing on end, his voice coming out a low growl, "Cthulhu! Dem! Don't talk to him any more - we need to strike now!"

"But I can feel R'lyeh rising to greet me..."

"You don't have long until your reality is completely warped," said Paws, "I've remotely activated the ship's scanners to assist you. Find that signal and open a portal to its location!" 

 

Moving through forbidden dimensions of space was a harrowing experience, one that Dem immediately hoped he would never have to repeat again. It was a little like doing something completely against his instincts: attempting to walk through a solid object, trying to fit through a gap too small for him, plunge into a lake of fire. His mind was screaming at him, throwing images of imagined future pain at him, filling him with the nausea and vertigo of falling endlessly in several directions at once. His senses did everything they could to try and convince him to shut his eyes tight, jolts of consciousness trying to forcibly wake him up from a dream that should have ended hours ago and was in danger of going towards something he shouldn’t be able to see. The scenes that whirled around him were blurry, half-constructed things made of snarling clouds of light, like the images on one of Lita’s monitors when it wasn’t fully tuned in to whatever she was trying to pick up. Cthulhu had warned him not to give in to the urge to quit, though, or he would lose the ones guiding him, possibly even be thrown into the chaos with no protection, to be devoured by things he can’t even comprehend. The Elder God’s chanting, unsettling as it was, at least provided him with a focus to concentrate on. The rhythmic beeping of Paws’ gadgets also helped, although Dem couldn’t stop being distracted by trying to work out how the Ultharians were capable of such advanced technology while having no opposable thumbs. Still, somehow, once the pandemonium subsided, he found himself still with the others. He was the only one lying on the floor, clutching their ribcage in agony from nonexistent wounds as a confused Dem pawed at his face, but at least he hadn’t lost the main party. By now, ‘the main party’ seemed to be just Cthulhu and Paws. Ember was too big to fit through the portal, explained Cthulhu, and Umi had refused to teleport with them. 

“Probably off sulking somewhere,” said Cthulhu, rolling his eyes.

“You know, you should treat her better than that,” said Dem as he stood up.

“Don’t you have a lady skeleton waiting for you back home or something? I don’t see you worrying about where she is or rushing off to apologise to her.”

“She’s a ghost, I have no idea how I would go about finding her if such a thing were even possible, and this isn’t the sort of place I would want to take her in any case. If there were any choice, I wouldn’t want to be here myself.”

“Exactly. I don’t think this is the sort of place Umi belongs either. She’d probably get over-emotional and mess things up again.”

“Do you two have any actual idea where we are?” asked Paws, wandering up to the nearest bookshelf and sniffing it. Looking around him, Dem noticed that his environment was almost entirely made up of bookshelves. From floor to ceiling, every wall was lined with shelves packed with books of all shapes and sizes, although the inhabitants seemed to prefer the dramatic-looking antiquarian variety, especially enormous tomes bound in what Dem hoped was ordinary leather from a non-sentient animal. After his recent experiences with his new travelling companions, he kept looking over his shoulder to make sure none of them were moving and that no new whispering voices had appeared in the back of his mind. Like the archives of rare books in a vast library it resembled, the chamber was utterly labyrinthine. Dem feared that even the terrifying cosmic awareness of an Elder God was no match for a library classification system as outdated and idiosyncratic as this one. It was approaching Government bureaucracy in its level of Byzantine complexity.

“I wouldn’t touch any of the books,” said Cthulhu, “I think this is where the Narrator archives all of the great destinies that he keeps records of. I’m not sure how the writing might relate to what actually happens but it probably isn’t good to damage anything by accident.”

“Since when did you care? I thought you wished to devour worlds,” said Dem.

“Yes, I do, but only in the way I’m destined to. I’m not a mindless beast, you know, I’m not dumb enough to risk the consequences to myself if I mess with my own destiny,” said Cthulhu, adding, “Not like that idiot.”

“Oh, I believe the Narrator knows exactly what he’s doing,” growled Paws.

“You said that your home planet was hit by the Narrator,” prompted Cthulhu, “I thought Ulthar just liked intergalactic warfare. You did pick a fight with three neighbouring solar systems...”

“We did not! It was out of necessity!” the cat hissed, “Our planet used to be isolated. We weren’t even supposed to be able to get to the neighbouring solar systems. We had enough going on with our own world, for crying out loud! I’ve told you about the Thousand Year Cycle of Destiny, right?”

“Several times.”

“Well, our Narrator decided it was outdated,” the cat spat the word as though it left a bad taste on his tongue, “That our entire solar system was outdated. We were abandoned. Replaced. No longer the scene of our own destiny. The only people allowed to see what had become of their own future were those who left their homes to the new and improved colonies on the next solar systems out. Most of them didn’t come back, and those who did… we didn’t recognise them. We had to close our borders to them. And that led to open hostility, when the actual inhabitants came in to see what we were doing. It became a vicious fight for existential survival.”

“And here I was thinking you were squabbling over a moon,” said Cthulhu.

“If you’d like to forget that rather stressful world you’re on, our enemies’ homelands are far more densely populated and nobody important minds you eating them...”

“I’ll put them in mind for my next meal of the day,” promised Cthulhu, “But for now, it’s personal for me as well. This Narrator tried to turn me into the exact opposite of what I am!”

“Me, too. He’s put my entire race in danger and, by the sounds of it, an entire solar system,” said Dem, pointing his sword down the corridor ahead of them, “It’s time we had a word with him in person!”


	4. The Legendary Heroes Face Off Against The Narrator

Very little in the way of security had been present in the library so far, a fact that confused Dem. Surely such an important facility, where the annals of destiny itself were kept, possibly even facilities for creating new destinies by writing them down, would not be left unguarded. As he progressed down the corridor, he found out why there was so little visible guard. It wasn't necessary, with the kind of books that were kept here. Assuming there was no way for the books to go anywhere else if they broke out - or at least, no point in bothering to try and stop using any method them other than to make it a nice environment for books to roost - they were quite capable of guarding themselves from threats such as other people in rooms with them having intact body parts and souls. 

"Oh, wow, they've got the Necronomicon 2! I didn't think that had even been released y..." were the words Dem heard shortly before Cthulhu ran past him, screaming in a high-pitched gurgle that reminded Dem more of a lobster that had been dropped in a pan of boiling water than a sanity-rending cosmic horror. The screaming was slightly muffled as the book was trying to eat his head with massive jaws that had sprouted from the edges of the pages, entirely ruining its value as a collector's edition. Tentacles emerged from the spine and tried to wrap themselves around Cthulhu's throat, battling with his own face-tentacles in a struggle that ended up with him looking as though he had styled his beard into complicated plaits.

"Elder Gods aren't immune to their own evil books?" Dem whispered to Paws as he drew his sword.

"Their own, yes. Not each other's," Paws sniffed dismissively, "This isn't the first time he's accidentally done this. Try not to damage too many of the other books in the fight, okay? We don't know which ones are the type that eat your head and which are the type that destroy your destiny if you accidentally set them on fire. Assuming they're not all both types," he added, "At least we know why the sorting system makes no sense. Most of these books can probably teleport and they'd break your mind if you looked at the titles, never mind get close enough to put a stamp on them and get your hand bitten off."

Cthulhu screamed something that was muffled and in R'lyehian that Dem chose to interpret as 'hurry up and get this book off my head!'. He ran towards the Elder God and swung hard at the spine of the book, above where the top of Cthulhu's head would be. The book screeched and hissed, green acidic blood pouring out of the hole in its front cover. Detaching itself from Cthulhu's head, it lunged at its attacker, its jaws foaming. Paws sprang first, knocking it out of the sky and grabbing it in his jaws at the same time. He growled as he slashed at its pages and tugged at its cover, dislodging a cloud of paper and ichor, as well as his own fur and blood as the baleful tome fought back with flailing tentacles and random sparks of dark magic. The book was weakening, however, and it finally stopped thrashing when Cthulhu ran over and rammed his sword clean through its spine, pinning it to the floorboards through the plush carpet.

"It wasn't as good as the first one," commented Cthulhu, "The first book would have had my head off in one blow."

"Then why did you read it?" Paws demanded. He had been regurgitating the shredded paper he had accidentally swallowed while complaining that it tasted even worse than regular books. He smelled of burnt fur, as patches of his coat had been singed where he had been sprayed with the novel's vile animating fluid. 

Cthulhu shrugged, "Strange aeons, that which can eternal lie, and so on. It's worth the hassle if you're interested in that sort of thing. Actually, I wonder if they have the original? I suppose its too much to ask that they actually put it in the same place as Book 2..."

"Cthulhu. Dem. We have to go this way. Quickly!" Paws hissed. Then he darted off down a corridor before either of them could react. The other books were starting to move and growl, a few of them opening eyes on the front of their covers, so Dem decided to follow the cat before he could disturb any more of the sleeping inhabitants.

Even with the utmost care, Dem could only move so slowly while also not letting the cat out of sight as he wove his way through the endless maze of bookshelves. There would be no way to find him again if they lost sight of Paws. As they chased the flitting green shadow, they were constantly aware of the books snapping at their heels, covers skittering, tiny voices beckoning. Their promises of knowledge that would rise them above the evolutionary dead end that was their species, the secrets to edit the Universe, were dangerously tempting, but Dem understood that it was bait for a trap and Cthulhu had already read most of these books before. The Elder God blocked them out by humming a cheery little tune that felt out of place coming from the waving mouth-tentacles of such a monstrosity, but soon proved to be incredibly catchy, and Dem couldn't help but join in with his own hollow, slightly rattling voice. It wasn't like their attempts at stealth had ever worked anyway.

After about ten and a half bookcases, the cat stopped and looked up at one of the books on the top shelf. He tensed, then sprang. His front paws caught the top of the bookcase and his back paws scrabbled on the top shelf, knocking books off until he had a big enough space to squirm inside. Then he sniffed another book, grabbed it between his teeth and jumped off the shelf.

"What are you doing?" demanded Cthulhu. 

"Reading," said Paws, laying the book flat and leafing through the pages with one paw, "Be quiet in the library!"

"Try telling the books that," said Dem, slamming his foot down on a tentacle that had tried to creep up on him, "Why are you trying to read the books that want to eat our souls?"

"This isn't the soul eating book aisle," explained Paws, "If you all step properly in, they won't go in each other's territories. Look, I found a strategy guide."

"A what?" asked Dem, doing as he was advised. True to the cat's word, the pursuing books stayed where they were, hovering, snapping their jaws and trying to lure him with words back over the dividing line.

"Well... a book that can help me out with strategy, at least. It's the destinies of some idiots I don't care about in the neighbouring solar systems. But it's got some information about their military intelligence I had no idea about. If I can learn more, I can cut a bloody swathe through their fleet. The skies will burn for millennia!"

"Are you sure it's okay for you to be reading that? It sounds like cheating to me," said Dem.

"It is NOT cheating! It's just research!" Paws sniffed, "Besides, he started it."

"Who started what, exactly?"

All three of them looked around at this fourth speaker. A tall, gangly man in a rather severe pinstripe suit was walking down the aisle from the opposite end. His feet made no sound and he walked confidently, without fear from or particular interest in the books, with one book already balanced under one arm. His face was rather pale and morose-looking, his hair a little sparse. Paws sprang in front of him, back arched, tail fluffed, fur on end. An eerie high-pitched growl escaped his lips.

"I thought I'd find you in this particular section," said the man. He began to pick up some of the books that had been knocked off the shelves and place them back, tutting at the mess, "I hope you haven't caused too much destruction in the restricted archives you've almost certainly broken into. I realise the books can be rather rude but they don't mean it. It's in their nature."

"What would you know about things being left to do what they're supposed to?" Paws hissed.

"Yeah, you can't even leave things alone when they're already an anathema to all of creation!" said Cthulhu, looking rather more proud than Dem thought he should.

"You've caused nothing but damage to the fates of entire worlds," said Dem, folding his arms, "If you're expecting us, you must know why we're here. You're going to answer for your crimes!"

"For everything that's gone wrong with your fates? Even though I'm not responsible for them all?" the Narrator frowned, "You don't understand anything about the dangerous world you've broken into, do you?

"I understand that the shelving system sucks," complained Cthulhu. 

"I didn't invent the shelving system, the books did," said the Narrator, "And I didn't destroy your destiny, Cthulhu... that man did!"

The cat looked over to where the man was pointing, back down the corridor he had walked in from. Another, similarly dressed man walked in. He was smaller, more frail-looking, with wispy white hair and a heavily wrinkled face.

"Thank you for getting me in trouble once again, Howard," said the man, "Stop putting the books back on the wrong shelves," he peered down at the cat over thin-framed glasses, "We have guests, eh?" 

"It's you they're looking for," said Howard, "This is Philip. He's the one you're here to see."

"Well, yes, I've been working with the Elder God and the skeleton and there were some complications, but I've never met the cat in my life," Philip scratched his head.

"There are two of you?" asked Paws.

"There are lots of us. Tens of thousands. This library is as vast as your entire solar system," said Howard, "And we don't all agree. I don't even know who it was who contacted you, or told you to come here, or interfered with someone else's work. It would take me all week to find out."

"I can see why that might be a pain in the butt. It's still no excuse," said Cthulhu, "None of you should be interfering with the destinies of others."

"It doesn't just always work properly on its own, you know. It needs people to maintain it," said Philip, "It's like anything else involving people. Human health, sanity, politics... Sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we don't even realise it in time, other times we try and fix it but make it worse, sometimes we don't co-ordinate well enough to know what each other is even up to. For instance, Cthulhu, you were never supposed to go to that world. You were headed to Earth. Being woken up early due to the malicious actions of someone outside fate meant you woke up early and had to quickly snack on the nearest planet. This led to the entire human civilisation being wiped out and some of the dead returning as... well, as Dem's race. So you see why we can't just let it run its course now?"

"And changing my entire nature is any better?" Cthulhu frowned.

"I would have changed it back again," promised Philip, "And no, Dem, I wasn't the one that wiped out your entire race to fix the 'problem' of your existence. I imagine that was one of the hard-liners. Nobody likes them," said Philip, "Howard, do we have any unoccupied planets we can evacuate Dem's people to? We could give Cthulhu a lift to another planet he's allowed to snack on, while we're at it. Not the same planet, of course, ahem!"

"I KNEW IT!" Paws yowled, swiping at the man with unsheathed claws and forcing him to jump back, "You're the one who did it! The fact that you knew I'd be here... that you're so willing to lead another entire race into the same trap... that planet isn't just conveniently unoccupied, is it? It has another destiny that doesn't fit them... or no destiny at all! Just like the planets you tried to cart us off to!"

"It was a routine upgrade..." Howard began hesitantly. The cat attacked.


	5. The Legendary Heroes Are Betrayed

Tentacles sprouted from the cat's back, lashing out at the Narrator and grabbing him by the arms and neck. He landed with all four claws on the man's head. Paws was a flurry of claws and teeth, slashing at the Narrator's face and throat. Philip yelped and tried to batter the cat with the large book he had been in the middle of reshelving when he was jumped. At the same time, he chanted something in R'lyehian that caused the runes on the front of the grimoire that looked suspiciously as though it was bound in human skin to burst into black flames that also started pouring out from its pages to engulf the cat. Dem wondered if he had read all the books in his library to that degree of memorisation, if they were just unfortunate enough to be fighting him in his personal section of the library or if the whole thing was planned out by the manipulative near-Gods from the start. The latter seemed the most likely. 

Cthulhu had already drawn his sword and charged at Howard, who picked up another book and chanted a section of it, causing the Elder God to slam right into a hastily constructed barrier spell. Dem instinctively brought his sword up to attack but then suddenly stopped. At first, he wasn't sure why he couldn't act. He had always moved with the flow of battle, as if it was a song and he was a dancer, but the rush of energy wouldn't come. He felt as though he was rooted into place and was rapidly sinking somewhere far away, where he could never reach the battle in time. It reminded him a little of waking from death again. A wave of panic assaulted him as he wondered if he were really dying, hit by some malevolent wave of magic from one of the books without even realising it. Maybe he had been written out of existence by one of the Narrators.

Then he understood. He shook his head, as if to dislodge all remaining doubt. His morale was at its lowest, that was true; there was no way for him to fight. This was not because he was dying or even losing. He had reached a point where there was no correct move to take in the battle. Nothing about the fight was his destiny. To side with anyone would not be true to who he was, but neither would attacking anyone. He was stuck between a monstrosity who wanted to devour his home planet, a cat who may or may not be leading a genocidal war against three entire solar systems, and two entities who existed only to tamper irresponsibly with the destinies of others. If Cthulhu and Paws slew the two Narrators; there would be more of them, together with an entire library full of hostile books, and even if they managed it, there would be nobody left to maintain destiny. If he aided the Narrators, there would be no reason for them not to betray him afterwards, and they didn't seem like the sort of people who would think twice about betraying an inconsequential lesser life form such as himself. He couldn't just sit back and let them tear the whole place apart, though, and he didn't think he could take on both sides even if there was any reason to. 

Dem sighed. This isn't the sort of thing I'm supposed to deal with, he thought to himself. I'm a simple, traditional main character. I have my quarry, I slay it, I save the world from it, there's a romance in it for me if I'm lucky, I get to rest until next time. First all of the self-sacrifice bullshit, now I don't even know who the enemy is or why I'm fighting. 

He looked over at the books for inspiration. Maybe Paws had the right idea. There had to be something in a library this big that told him what to do. What did the cat call it? A strategy guide. Maybe a record of his own destiny. It seemed like a bad idea to look at something like that but it hadn't done the cat any harm. No, he reminded himself, the cat had looked at his enemy's destiny. Did the Narrators catalogue their own destinies? Did they even have destinies? He searched in his head for an excuse to go and look without it seeming as though he was deserting the battlefield. Maybe he could invent some reinforcements to go and fetch. The talking sword and the dragon had to be here by now.

As soon as he looked away and opened his mouth to speak, the ground began to shake and the whole library was thrown into pandemonium. Panicked yelling from other Narrators as they ran around desperately trying to cast spells, psychic screaming from the books as they ran wild, randomly devouring each other or setting shelves on fire, tentacles sprouting from the floor, then, reverberating around the entire wing of the library, manic laughter from a single person. Dem had heard that sound before, but now it was ten times as unhinged.

He braced himself as a tidal wave engulfed him. Try as he might to cling onto a bookshelf, he was swept straight off his feet, bookshelf and all. It was all he could do to swing his legs around and push off with his feet to avoid being hit by the shelf and the books that sprayed from it. The library’s denizens swirled around him, psychically hissing like furious beasts. They were surprisingly resilient for books, he noted, their pages mostly still in their binding as they were tugged along by the current. The fires had been put out and only a few of the books had charred pages. They were doing more damage to each other as they blamed each other on the spot than their actual assailant had done.

Except for the ones she had managed to command, a growing cluster that swirled around her head making a disconcerting, droning noise, like a swarm of angry trained attack bees. Dem recognised it as a droning, slightly discordant chant as she conducted them all at once in a magical orchestra. Arcane forces crackled around her in a miasma of sickening colours, clashing in a thousand different ways, barely contained and probably not under her control much longer. The ozone stench in the air was cloying as reality warped under the strain of the primal narrative energy. Her eyes were completely black, her expression distorted into a grin. She was conversing at length with four figures, one of whom was yowling and spitting, the second swearing vehemently in R’lyehian, the other two trying to outdo each other in a long-winded technical explanation as they desperately tried to convince her to stop. She cackled at them and repeated the same words over and over.

The only ones he caught were ‘true love’.  
A tentacle rose from behind him, tall and broad enough to swallow him in its shadow, then came crashing down. He darted out of the way, split seconds before the bookcase he was hanging onto was shattered with one blow. With nothing to anchor him against the tide, he was spinning out of control. He was once again grateful that skeletons didn’t need to breathe but he could certainly be dashed against bookcases at high speed or be crushed by thrashing tentacles. The only thing to grab onto that the tentacles weren’t attacking was the tentacles. He reached out for the nearest one and stabbed into its rubbery flesh with his sword. With a burst of strength inspired by desperation, letting out a battlecry as he did so, he managed to pierce the unseen kraken’s hide with one thrust. It responded with a screech, then swung the tentacle in a wide arc that hauled him up into the air with it. The trajectory was taking him straight back towards the ground at dizzying speed, an impact he wouldn’t survive. Swinging around to the correct angle, he let go of the sword and allowed himself to be flung into the air. Bookshelf debris, swiping tentacles and one opportunistic book all barely missed him as he hurtled towards his target – the floating cultist in the middle of the arcane storm – each blurry object passing just over his head making him feel remarkably sick for someone with literally no stomach.

Suddenly, he was there, within sight of his true enemy. He was also unarmed, about to crash into something and kill himself, with no real plan and only one tiny window of time to perform it even if he had one. The sheer pressure of the raw magical forces were threatening to crush him under their weight or pulverise him with a stray bolt of lightning. He finally understood what he was here to do. He didn’t know which of the many players in this rivalry between the Narrators had summoned him, who had harmed him, or who, if any, had ever been in the right. He didn’t know if someone had asked them to make the terrible changes each time, or if some of them had been on the Narrators’ own initiative. All he knew was that, however involved in the whole affair she had been, however much she was in deliberate control of what she was doing right now, Umi needed to be stopped before she unravelled the whole fabric of destiny in a blind fit of lover’s rage.

Dem saw Umi look up. He saw her indicate him, causing two of the books to break from the pack and rush him. He instinctively looked at the pages of the books for inspiration but they immediately turned into a mass of sharp, dripping fangs. 

He looked down at the other books. He briefly spotted the notebook she carried, the one she always had that ritual with that nobody else understood. 

Ignoring the pain as the teeth crunched into his skull and collar bone, he snagged the notebook with his feet, wrenching hard. The whole belt came loose, depositing Umi’s robes in the water. She screamed with indignation, then louder in blind panic as she realised the book had been flung into the air. 

Just before the darkness swallowed him, he reached out and closed his bony fingers around it.

* * *

_You are not the one soul bound to me. I should not be in your possession. Go and find your own record book._

Dem blinked, or tried to. He couldn’t feel his body any more. The pain had gone but so had all sensation, except for a vague idea of floating and a strange sense of serenity. I’m dead again, he thought, I have to be.

_Life and death are meaningless in my presence. However, you cannot use me to bring yourself back. I am not keyed to you. Please, do not do this. Whatever your business with my client, to tamper with me is a sin that cannot be forgiven._

_I don’t think it’s worse than what she was going to do to the entire Universe,_ replied Dem. He tried to open his mouth to talk but realised he probably didn’t have a head. The book seemed quite happy to communicate by directly projecting words into his mind. This was an odd experience, as Dem usually thought in speech, remembering everyone’s voices, not silent, static text.

_It can be reversed, eventually. All can be reversed over time, as long as my memories last._

_Strange aeons, eh?_

_Oh, I do not lie, ever. And death doesn’t really die, it just starts again from the beginning, like everybody else._

_You’re different from the books in the library. I thought you might be one of them, but…_

_Think of them as my children. They’re strange children, because some of them aren’t quite born the way that books are supposed to, and a few of them end up with readers that aren’t meant for them. They have as much right to exist as anything else in the Universe, though. Except for people who tamper with me - they will find out what it means to lose me._

_I’m sorry if I caused problems. I just couldn’t think what to do. I…_

_It’s okay, you haven’t damaged anything. Just seen the internal workings of things you probably shouldn’t. I’m not sure if you can just leave and be the same kind of life form you always were, though. Abyss staring back at you, and all that. Not a choice of mine, you understand. I really just prefer to observe the Universe if at all possible._

_You speak as though you’re a God._

_Not at all. I didn’t create anything. I am merely existence’s awareness of itself, the inevitability of all creation, something that can’t begin or end, but always is. Unlike my children, who keep on being produced but are only a note in my endless song. I am not fate, but I’m what keeps fate alive._

_You said… I have one of you as well._

_You’re not aware of using yours, but that’s fairly normal. It’s been a while since you used it, anyway. Somehow, with everything going on lately, you haven’t been able to use it, or maybe it was down for maintenance because so much was wrong with your destiny. None of us would ever want to cause a tragedy such as a faulty destiny becoming permanent – we’d rather lose entire aeons of history than do so!_

_Would it be possible… to find mine and use it now? I think I really screwed up somewhere._

_It’s highly unorthodox but seeing as you’re in a rather unusual position, I think I might be able to justify the risk. I have to agree with you, just between the two of us, my client’s usage is bordering upon a violation of contract. I could even say I feel bad for you, if my client really has done something to you that brought you all the way here in desperation. Especially if you really have been here too long…_

_If I really have… lost a lot of history… how much are we talking?_

_It’s hard to say with your destiny still in so much flux. There’s been time travel involved as well as fourth-dimensional consciousness shift, hasn’t there? Oh, dear… I may have to talk to the management before I try and locate your record book… just bear with me one moment, and for all our sakes, try not to look!_


	6. The Legendary Hero Dem Finally Rests Eternal

On the surface of Ulthar Prime stood four warriors whose names would go down in legend. It would be the fifth cycle of their narrative tradition. This was a rather nervous time, as it was the first time in history that the cycle had occurred while science was advanced enough to take space travel to the three neighbouring solar systems.

That was not where the four warriors stood, for their home solar system was the seat of their eternal cycle of legend. Maybe one day, when space travel was well established enough for the unimaginatively named Ulthar Beta, Ulthar Gamma and Ulthar Lambda to feel like homes from home, rather than the outposts of a few scientific expedition teams and a growing number of mining enterprises, when they felt enough like Ulthar for the legend to feel as though it belonged there, maybe those stories would start to gradually ripple outwards, while still never leaving their home behind.

As for the slightly nearer Sol system and its major inhabited planet, Earth, plans had been scrapped to go back for any more missions after it had been discovered that a large colony of monsters lived there who kept treating them like domestic pets.

The four warriors – the heroic cat Paws, the powerful mage Umi, the gullible idiot with a sword Ember, and the sleeping hero Sharpe who had been awakened from his long stasis under the mountain – stopped for a break after a tough random encounter. Paws was on healing duty as usual, while Ember kept watch. As she often did, Umi stared up at the sky, a wistful expression on her face, as if she were longing for something far away, maybe unobtainable. At least, Paws was fairly sure she wasn’t staring doe-eyed at Ember as he hovered above them. He had the vague impression that it would upset Sharpe.

“You know, we’re almost at the savepoint,” said Umi.

“The what?” asked Paws.

“Um… I mean… the skeleton statue in the cave.”

“Oh, the one you keep wandering off to tell your entire life story to?” asked Paws.

She nodded, “It’s important. It recharges the travel magic.”

“I thought you said it worked on time magic.”

“It’s a bit of both,” she said.

“Look, who cares how it works? We’ve survived five battles we thought we’d lost because we somehow teleported back there,” said Sharpe.

“You say that, but I don’t ever remember it happening,” said Paws.

“You’re not very observant,” said Sharpe.

“Well, excuse me for not knowing as much about freaky things asleep in caves than a freaky thing asleep in a cave! I’m still better at magic than you, anyway.”

“I’m a sword. I’m the literal embodiment of not-magic. It’s not really an achievement to be better at magic than me.”

“Magic swords should be good at magic!”

“No, we’re good at dealing with magic.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You two! No killing each other until after I visit the statue!” ordered Umi.

“Who’s in charge of this party again?” muttered Paws, but he trudged through the sand after her anyway.


End file.
